The creative offspring of a collaboration between Designworks – a BMW Group subsidiary – and outdoors gear brand The North Face is an unexpected partnership responsible for a design evoking thoughts of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome designs, a futuristic off-road ready camping trailer, and maybe even a tad of a magical carriage that reverts back to a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. Unveiled at CES 2019, the teardrop trailer is an example of The North Face’s exploratory research into structurally durable and air-permeable material technology, partnered with BMW Designwork’s vehicular expertise, hinting of the wide application of a waterproof-breathable material engineered to endure the elements without the traditional discomforts of outdoor wear and gear.
As anyone who has camped can attest, staying inside a tent can be an uncomfortable affair, especially when cold and wet, due to the built up humidity and heat produced by occupants and trapped by the non-permeable material used to keep the elements at bay. The North Face developed Futurelight, an ultra-breathable and waterproof fabric dotted with nano-spun perforations to produce a lightweight material engineered to keep condensation at a minimum.
The Futurelight Teardrop Trailer Concept in itself is not likely to ever see the light of day as a production product, but its airless tire and dual level conceptual design (revealed in a VR experience at CES with a prototype in the works) affords the two brands the opportunity to tout the material’s potential as an innovative material game-changer within the competitive outdoor gear category. The North Face’s Futurelight site more than hints a line of products covered with this material is on its way, hopefully before the arrival of the next polar vortex.
Source: design-milk
